


Hold Still

by bopeep, ElisAttack



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Adolescent Feelings, Artist Steve Rogers, Awesome Sarah Rogers, Canon Compliant, Catholic Steve Rogers, Catholicism, Gen, M/M, Matinee Idol in Training Bucky Barnes, Mother-Son Relationship, Pre-War, Pre-World War II Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Teen Angst, art therapy, mostly - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-12
Updated: 2018-06-12
Packaged: 2019-05-21 08:12:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14911682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bopeep/pseuds/bopeep, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElisAttack/pseuds/ElisAttack
Summary: Sarah Rogers knows her boy inside and out, for better and for worse, and she doesn't suggest he spend his afternoons studying Bucky Barnes' handsome face just for practice.A mother knows things, even if her son and his angsty childhood friend haven't quite figured it out yet.





	Hold Still

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Captain America Reverse Bang with @ElisAttack! Thank you so much for such a beautiful piece of art to dream about for the past few months, and thank you for your endless patience. You are a talented, bonafide saint.

Sarah was used to her boy Steven coming home wearing colors she preferred to reserve for the workplace: blood, bruise, blush, tears. She would mend his slacks, wrap his breaks, talk him through it all as best as she could between shifts at the hospital as if she never clocked out. No tussle was ever quite the same. She came to know the ins and outs of every push and shove from the way he would recount them, blow by blow. Sarah would sigh heavily; of course he was _never_ in the wrong. Steve, furious and infinite for such a small frame, was dangerously right, just like his father: cemented into his ways and moving for no one. Sarah had loved him for it, still loved her son for it, and was grateful the other girls looked the other way once in a while when she tucked away a bandage roll or box of Curity cotton in the pocket of her smock. Waiting at home was a personal triage. They knew about Sarah’s boy.  
  
Because while Steve fought a lot of other boys, it was his own breaking body that he fought with the most wrenching vehemence; he was no stranger to the children’s ward. Sarah knew God gave her this child on purpose. His heart fluttered like a bird against his cage of brittle bones and he was never without a cough or cold somewhere nipping at him. On nights when he shook with fever she held him close to her, swaddled like an infant in those early days alone without Joe. It was a blessing and a constant source of worry that she worked as a ward nurse; the stolen goods she brought home in her pockets would never be enough to fight what contagions she brought home to him that she could not see, any creeping infection or stowaway virus.  
  
_Heavens forfend._  
  
But all at once there were two of them, these bright and true-hearted boys, and they split the quota of hurt. Sarah felt her prayers had been answered when James Barnes showed up one afternoon, and Steve had someone to shoulder all that righteousness too big for his frame. For that, Sarah loved him with her whole heart, because he was there when she could not be. She thought of Bucky like a jar for pennies; she invested in him the love she knew he gave back to Steve in spades, and would, when she was gone. Because one day she would be gone, and Steven’s fight wouldn’t stop for the world, and who would be there to wash the worst colors away then?  
  
When she prayed, she never pictured a boy like Bucky for a guardian angel; there was enough of that pomade in his hair to slick a city sidewalk in a drought and he had a smile that could undo crime. Sarah was perfectly aware that teamed up with Steve’s uncanny ability to find or make trouble they would get on in all ways like a house on fire, but above all else he was _there_ and his whole heart was open when others had snuffed theirs out like streetlamps in these hard times. She couldn’t hold it against them, those doused lights. Folks seemed to respond to hardship in one of two ways: they either let it make them cold and hard, or dug their heels in and stuck closer together with the rest of their suffering brothers.  
  
It felt every day that Steve was getting stronger at Bucky’s side as they grew together (Bucky faster than Steve, though he rarely mentioned it.) Bucky spent many days sitting on the edge of Steve’s bed, both of them nose deep in little novels and reading the exciting bits aloud (those days when Steve could not go out.) Sarah would beg for extra shifts then, when she knew someone would be around. Saint Bucky, to her mind.  
  
But teenage years are tough, even on soulmates. Overnight they became aware of odd sensations and complicated feelings that accompanied the stretching of limbs, maturity somewhere on the horizon, and something began to itch beneath their skin, grinding gears and setting the two on edge and ready to lash out at each other whenever the pressure of hormones built too far.    
  
Sarah had an inclination, call it a hunch, as to what two and two could equal. Anyone who knew her boy, who knew the Barnes boy, who knew what tender burdens they helped each other bear, might have that inclination. She swallowed it. God sent James Barnes. That was God’s doing, and so it was what it was and what it wasn’t was anyone else’s business.  
  
But she worried. There was seemingly always room in her heart for worry, no matter how much of it she couldn’t afford to spend.  
  
She could hear them going at it in the stairwell and was almost too tired to roll her eyes. It had been a long shift, and a tickle in her throat hinted at illness coming, likely a gift from her patients. She made a mental note not to kiss Steve on the cheeks. Her shoes begged at her aching feet to sit down as she put her key in the door.  
  
It wasn’t the first time by a long shot that Sarah had come home to Steve and Bucky about to tear at each other; it was becoming something of a trend that they were fighting more and more, arguing and spitting insults. Bucky was sitting backward over a kitchen chair, Steve cross legged on his bed with his drawing pad in his lap. The radio and their bickering must have drowned out the front door opening, because she swung the door open wide without catching either of their attentions. In her quiet exhaustion, she stayed a moment in the shadow of the frame, watching them.  
  
“You’re gonna have to, Buck, there’s nothing but talkies now,” Steve said, a voice one or two notches above normal, indicating they’d already been at it. The neighbors could probably recount it to her later.  
  
“Face like mine doesn’t need sound. Don’t you think?” Bucky said. Steve scowled and kneaded his eraser aggressively.  
  
“Definitely say that in an audition, you’ll be on a marquee in no time flat. _Modest young man, good bones, doesn’t speak because he’s so handsome,_ ” he sang in a mocking tone. Bucky straightened.  
  
“Hey, your face walks into a room before your opinions, Rogers.”  
  
“Well, excuse me, sir, if you wouldn’t mind, I’m trying to capture your opinions.” Steve swiped at the drawing pad harshly with the eraser. Sarah smiled; she’d suggested Steve practice his portraits on Bucky, and Bucky could have something of a headshot in case he ever needed one (in truth she didn’t know how Hollywood auditions were run, but it seemed actors had photographs of themselves to give away all the time, and they were always being painted by magazine illustrators like Steve aspired to be.) She'd hoped it would give them an excuse to sit quietly together again, like they used to when they were boys. It seemed Bucky was coming around less and less, and when he did, Steve was always on the offensive. A portrait session seemed like a reasonable idea, grounded in each of their personal interests.  
  
It didn’t appear to be going well.  
  
“Right, of course,” Bucky mocked, “my apologies to the professional artist.” He folded his arms tight over his chest, shielding. Steve reached over and knocked them back open, back to the position they had been, and Bucky hissed.  
  
“That’s _Mr. Rogers_ to my customers, sir,” Steve said.  
  
“ _Mr. Rogers_ , your toe is poking through your shoe,” Bucky said with a huff. Steve put aggressive lines to the paper.  
  
“If only I had a _well-off Hollywood friend_ to buy me a pair of wingtip brogues.”  
  
“And ruin your reputation as a starving artist? Stevie, I would never.” Sarah couldn’t see his face, turned away, but she could hear that golden, trouble-starting look on Bucky’s face when he said her boy’s name like that. _Lord_ , she thought a tired prayer, _let no one ever take that smile away_. She noticed Steve drawing faster; he was trying to capture that smile himself, perhaps. How could any living thing blame him? As if he felt suddenly aware of being suddenly watched, Bucky must have dropped his eyes because Steve threw up his hands.

“ _Quit lookin’ down, Buck!_ This was a bad idea---”  
  
“I’m not a bowl of fruit! Get used to drawing humans like yer ma said, Rogers, Christ!”  
  
“---more like a worm for all the wriggling you’re doing. Stay put!”  
  
“I just wanna see it!” Bucky whined, attempting to get up. Steve shielded the paper.  
  
“It’s just lines so far! You’re making this hard!”  
  
“How’m I making this hard? You’ve got all the power here, Stevie, I’m cornered! You’ve got me right where you want me.”  
  
“Yeah, and you won’t _stay_ there---! Lift your chin a little, Buck, for Pete’s sake you look like a gargoyle!” Sarah had to remind herself not to laugh; she was so rarely afforded a glimpse of their time alone. They volleyed so quickly, it was hard to keep up.  
  
“I’m nervous! Nobody’s drawn me before. Christ, if you’re going to be a real portrait artist, you’re going to have to learn better bedside manner.”  
  
“You’re the world’s worst model!”  
  
“And you’re a _model asshole!_ ” As if on cue, because she couldn’t help herself then, Sarah let the floorboard in the door frame creak and both heads snapped to attention. Bucky nearly knocked over his chair, on his feet with guilt on his face in capital letters. “Evening, Mrs. Rogers,” he said, “your shift over?” Steve scrambled to the sink to get her a glass of water from the taps. Sarah nodded, noticing that they were eating boiled carrots on bread heels.  
  
“Is that dinner?” She asked, too tired even for disapproval. Steve set down her water.  
  
“It’s carrot cake if you squint,” he said. Bucky absently buttoned up his shirt in spite of the lingering evening heat and Sarah sat at the kitchen table across from Joe’s ever vacant head chair, and still as always she acknowledged him in the room. She pulled one foot into her lap and kneaded at it like bread.

“You boys having fun playing celebrity out here?”  
  
“Everything was going swell, Mrs. Rogers. Steve’s drawing my portrait, like you said.” Sarah looked to Steve, knowing he would not lie so easily.  
  
“We’re _not_ playing celebrity,” Steve said, and Sarah wasn’t sure if she heard disappointment there. When he handed her the notebook she put a flyaway strand of his hair back in place. He kissed her on the cheek.  
  
“I can see you’re not playing anything at all,” she said, opening to the day’s attempts: all nervous, hard scratches in vague shapes. “What’s all this?”  
  
“We tried your suggestion, and it didn’t work.”  
  
“I can’t say it did,” she said, running her hands over the paper to feel the indentations. Sometimes teenage feelings were difficult to decipher; other times they jumped out in plain English. He may as well have written in bold capital letters. But it did puzzle her: they were peas in a pod even in rough patches, and Steve was a good artist, without doubt. She wondered what was holding him back. “This isn’t like you.”  
  
“I’m a difficult subject,” Bucky started, and Steve cut him off.  
  
“I know him too well. It’s like trying to draw your own hands,” he said, shrugging stiffly. “They never look right cause you see them everyday.” Sarah hummed, considering it. Her arms ached from carrying, fingers cramped from sponging, gripping, tugging, holding. She looked down at them, considering. They didn’t look like the sort of thing any artist would want to draw, certainly never soft and pale like a lady in a painting. They were not hands, maybe, but tools with use. Helpers. She glanced at Steve’s; he was rambling about Bucky’s face as Bucky scowled. Steve had tough, taut hands. The bones beneath were not hints but clear and and obvious statements, and she knew they ached like hers despite their relative youth. But these were hands that gestured wildly and sharp, hands with purpose like her own. They were the same hands of the boy that would come running in, fresh out of breath, to tell her about his imagined adventures with Bucky. He would wheeze through every fascinating detail; he loved nothing, and no one, better.  
  
“I find it hard to believe,” she interrupted Steve’s argumentative babbling, “that the world’s most creative adventurers can’t use their imaginations in this scenario. You’re taking this awfully seriously. Inventors of carrot cake that you are,” she chuckled, taking a piece off one of the plates and popping it into her mouth. Bucky brought his chair back to the table and leaned on it, not quite sure where to put all his lanky limbs. “You boys could dream up a whopper, I remember. Fibs as long as novels, of the day you had with your best boy Bucky. Don’t say only I remember it that way.”  
  
“Ma---” Steve blushed. “We were kids---”  
  
“And now you're fifteen, I know, I know," she swatted at the air. "But it was only yesterday you were insisting I call you Rex Bandit when you got home from a day out in the sun with James pretending you were treasure thieves.”  
  
“To be fair, usually they stole from the peasants first. We were just getting it back,” Bucky defended. Steve smiled in spite of himself; he couldn’t deny that they had fun. “Most of the time.”  
  
“Peasants!” Sarah laughed out loud like a cloudburst, tension leaving her from the day behind and the evening opening up in front of her in their clear sweet eyes. The anger left them both, she could see, like a new chapter. Those childhood days were not easier years, by any means, but children don’t know. Those were golden hours to them. She was sure they missed it, deep down, as she did. She would move mountains for Steve to have emotions so simple again. “Heavens,” she sighed, “ _peasants_ .”  
  
“Somebody has to stand up for the little people.”  
  
“Some of them do just fine on their own,” Mrs. Rogers said, her fond smile curving in the dim room and only just visible as she turned towards the kitchen. “You two are a winning pair, that’s always been true. Growing pains, that’s all. Are you staying for dinner, sweetheart?” Sarah asked as if she had the energy to make something; Bucky sensed the formality. He was a good boy.  
  
“No thank you, Mrs. Rogers, I’d better get on home,” he said. Sarah nodded and waited for Steve to offer to walk him down the block, but her son had angrily turned back to his notebook. “Being a Saturday night and all. Sunday tomorrow,” he said obviously. But Sarah heard him asking to come back tomorrow, in his dull transparent way, and Steve wasn’t biting. She stood up as best as her joints would allow.  
  
“Try again tomorrow, Bucky. The sun’ll come out and you boys can sit on the balcony all day and find some good light, I won’t bother you a bit. Helen Kelly---” Sarah stopped herself, not wanting to worry young minds with the particulars of how and why she won an extra shift, when the odds of contracting the disease herself were just as good. “Helen Kelly offered up her shift and I won it.”  
  
“Is that Andrew’s mother?” Bucky asked. He seemed to know every boy in their 70-odd size class.  
  
“Which one’s Andrew?” Steve asked, bristled.  
  
“Built like a refrigerator? He said he’ll teach us to box, remember?” Bucky threw a punch at the air. “But for real, not like on the street. Much safer, Mrs. Rogers,” he said quickly. “For self-defense, and all. Steve doesn’t have to. It was just an idea I had---” he rambled, and Steve covered his face with his hands.  
  
“You can quit talking any time now,” he mumbled. Sarah decided to sort through this idea later; she wanted to talk to Steve while she still had the energy to do so and he was shutting himself off, so she turned to pat Bucky on the shoulders, scooting him out.  
  
“Try the portrait again tomorrow,” she repeated. “And pretend to get along, if you have to. Best friends do fight,” she said, guiding him to the door, “but the difference is they stick it out and through.”  
  
“Alright, Mrs. Rogers.”  
  
“I mean it. I want to hear all about those adventures when I come home again and find you two happy as you were then. You have my full permission to be children.” She turned him around at the door, surprised to find his eyes were almost higher than hers now.  “Don’t you let him look so serious, James Buchanan,” she said, and invoking the full and middle name, she pinned a responsibility on Bucky that he never took lightly.  
  
“Alright, Mrs. Rogers.”  
  
“Good boy. You tell your mother I tried and failed her tomato trick. And that I miss her so.” Bucky’s mother stopped her in the street once every few weeks like magic to tell her a new recipe workaround like they were state secrets. But Sarah had been working more, a blessing and a curse, and Mrs. Barnes had to make a point of sending Bucky with her tricks written with very lovely penmanship on very crude butcher’s paper.  
  
“She knows. Told me yesterday to tell you to quit workin’ so hard, and she’s keeping you in her prayers.”  
  
“She’s a dear. Tell her I said the same.”  
  
“Alright. See you tomorrow for my portrait after mass, Stevie?” Bucky asked at the door, his coat over his shoulder. “You have that big deadline for Life magazine,” he said, and his voice took on an unusual color, the kind of affect that was playful while fully committed. It tickled something familiar in Steve, that old fuzzy feeling of playing pretend, a sort of soft focus.  
  
It might work.  
  
“Sure thing, Buck.”  
  
He was out the door and bounding down the stairs; he’d be late home and starving, Sarah thought sadly, eating bread bits and and carrot ends with Steve like they were fairy folk. _Better Homes and Gardens_ they were not.  
  
“Do you want some carrot soup, ma?”  
  
“Is that what you were trying to make, baby?” She said. Steve went to the pot at the stove.  
  
“It was too hot to have the broth, so we just took some carrots out. I wasn’t that bad a host, I promise. Any trouble today?” He asked; it was an easy way of checking in without asking too much.  
  
“Some trouble. I like your trouble much better than my trouble. Tell me about that,” she said as he put the bowl in front of her. (She would tell him, later, that the soup was good, because she knew his sense of taste was a little off and wanted him to know he’d done alright.) “What happened this time?” Steve shrugged.  
  
“He just gets so frustrating sometimes. I'm sure he doesn’t mean to,” he said, “or, I don’t mean to,” he corrected, looking at the floor. “I don’t know. He gets bored. He could be out doing fun stuff and we’re sitting inside?” Sarah was piling her hair pins on the table next to her bowl of soup and cut him off immediately.  
  
“Which is not your fault, Steven, it’s very hot---”  
  
“I know that. But it’s also when it’s very cold, or it’s very damp, or when the sun hits me funny. I can tell he’s tired of it," he said.  
  
“ _You’re_ tired of it," Sarah corrected, and her son shrugged again, a new favorite expression of his that was rapidly replacing some of their more meaningful conversation.  
  
“Anyway he makes me mad," Steve deflected, not acknowledging his body as a player in this game. "He doesn’t have to be here if he’s going to be sour about it. It’s not a charity.”  
  
“Steven,” she said in her bedside tone, the one that said she wasn’t making a suggestion, “he’s your best friend.”  
  
“Yeah,” he replied, “and he could do better.”  
  
“He likes to be here. Nobody’s making him.”  
  
“Exactly! So maybe he should just get out while the getting’s good.”  
  
“Steven, don’t be a martyr. They won’t make you a saint for ruining a perfectly good friendship.”  
  
“You don’t know him like I do," Steve insisted now, finally spilling what for weeks had just been sulking silence, and Sarah was almost glad for the outpouring now. "He looks at me like he wants me to say something, all the time. I can’t draw him like that! It’s driving me crazy. Every time it’s quiet he looks like that for a split second and it makes me so mad I could swing at him. And we fight.”  
  
“Well, what does he want you to say?”  
  
“Bucky, you’re free. I’m becoming a monk.”  
  
“ _Steven_.”  
  
“I don’t know. He’s got girls on his block, you know. He could--- I don’t know." He trailed off, and Sarah could tell that he had a pretty good idea just by the stormy look in his eyes, betraying his imagination. "I’d be fine on my own.”  
  
“You are trapped in the worst part of your brilliant, creative brain, and I want you to take my advice," she said. "I think this game will work wonders.”  
  
“I think it’ll be desperate and weird.”  
  
“Do you think _you’re_ desperate and weird?” She asked outright. Sometimes she hoped just asking him to confirm or deny possible feelings would be a win. The other girls at the hospital said their sons and daughters at this age were not nearly as communicative, so she reminded herself to be thankful and not push too hard.   
  
“Ma.”  
  
“All the best artists are. Turn on that wild imagination, baby.” A wave of exhaustion hit her, as if her body finally recognized the hour. As much as she wanted to go straight to sleep, Steve sat there watching her expectantly now, and it was a rarity she couldn't walk away from. “You don’t need me to tell you your friendship is strong. You know it is. You need to remember why. He’s your partner in crime. Set yourself up for success and have fun. You've got time. You're not an old man yet, Steven.”  
  
“Doctor’s orders, huh?”  
  
“Doctor’s orders,” she repeated. “I’m going to fall asleep in your carrot cake if I don’t turn in.”  
  
“We can turn in," Steve said, his hair hiding his eyes and his thoughts as he took her bowl to the sink. "I’m gonna stay up and listen to Hit Parade, but I’ll keep it low.”  
  
“That’s fine. I can read,” she said, though she knew she would just listen from the other room until she drifted off. “My creative, funny boy is trapped under that worry. Let him have some fun, Rex Bandit.”  
  
“Rex Bandit is not a portrait artist,” Steve grumbled, as if the name tasted salt. But he considered it. “His brother Ralph, maybe.” And Sarah smiled, held his cheek briefly in her hand, this gift of a boy from heaven itself, and went into the bedroom to collapse for all the heat of the night.  
  
She fell asleep worrying (a Rogers pastime,) but there was hope for tomorrow where there hadn’t been before. And what she wouldn’t give to be a fly on the wall when these children stuck in their stretching bodies came back out to play.

* * *

Bucky showed up after church the next morning, wrapped in altogether too many layers but looking ready to meet his maker or at least impress the fussing mothers. Steve had wandered home from St. Cecilia’s alone after his mother kissed him goodbye on the cathedral’s front steps, reminding him how lucky she was to make a living this way (in plain earshot of the mothers who gave her something of a sideways glance.) It wasn’t as if the rest of them there were having easy times; it hit everyone hard, and made no exception for God-fearing folks who kept the holy the sabbath. Bucky’s family always took their time gabbing, and Steve ducked away to get back to the apartment. He wanted a moment to prepare, for whatever reason. It wasn’t as if the future of their friendship was resting upon the success of this playdate ( _don’t call it that_ ) but Steve felt a desperate lump in his stomach throughout mass as he went through the motions and let his mind go full-throttle in its anxiety spirals.  
  
He paused at the landing of each flight of stairs to catch his breath, nodding politely at his neighbors coming in and out of apartments. He’d sweat through his white linen shirt by the time he hit their floor and pulled his suspenders down over his shoulders to hit at the back of his knees as he trudged the final steps.  
  
The morning light was soft with clouds in spite of the heat, and in what came through the curtains Steve’s sketches pinned to the wall seemed to take on a glow. He didn’t have any portraits to speak of, which wasn’t to say he hadn’t tried. He loved architecture and cars and humans in action in busy spaces but he never really took the time (or, rather, felt like bothering someone long enough) to really do a study on facial features. Bucky was an obvious choice, he’d admit, but also presented a unique challenge: he was (and the word stuck to Steve’s throat like dry bread) handsome.  
  
God damn it. He _was_ ! Steve long suspected it was true but it was becoming inescapably clear now that he was growing into his good bones. That fucker. He was handsome. It was all downhill from here. Steve promised himself that today, he, a professional portrait artist would not get hung up on this. He would pretend that Bucky was just one of his hundreds of world famous, dazzlingly attractive celebrity models, and not even the most handsome among them. He could sketch him, no problem. He could do that all day.  
  
He was telling himself this when he heard Bucky in the hall and nearly tripped.  
  
Bucky whistled like a bird; he had a musical ear and a smooth baritone that could turn a tide. If he wanted to, Steve thought, he could make something of it on the radio someday. It was that nice. Steve could hear him greet the Keaneys who kept their door to the hall open at all hours for better ventilation - no fear of burglary because they had an enormous dog - as he passed. His hearing wasn’t as sharp as others, so he couldn’t imagine how loud the Keaneys must have been to the rest of the world if he heard them clear as a church bell. Steve gathered up his notebook and pencils, sticking one behind his ear as a sort of character choice. He heard his mother’s words in his ear, had heard them all night through, and had convinced himself that if Buck was drifting away (and to his mind, the red flags were flying at full staff) he would just have to get creative.  
  
Steve hurriedly scanned through a character he’d prepared in his mind. He came up with all sorts of fascinating details for Ralph Bandit, no stone unturned. He imagined the brilliant portrait artist down to the coins in his pockets, from seam to seam, studying with the masters, painting the stars, famous frescos, works in all the great museums. But Bucky caught him mid-stride and derailed the whole train of thought.  
  
“Can’t thank you enough for agreeing to do this poster for the picture, Rogers, it means a lot to MGM and it means a lot to me.” Steve stood there gaping as Bucky breezed past and climbed out onto the fire escape. Ralph Bandit was abruptly left in the dust.  
  
“No trouble at all, Mr. Barnes,” he said. “Always happy to do Mr., uhh, Meyer a favor.”  
  
“I hope you don’t mind, I came straight here. Didn’t have time to ask my driver to stop home to change,” he said, pinching his grey sweater between his fingers. Bucky didn't waste a moment; everything about him had an air of practice and maturity. Even his posture had changed. But for his Sunday dinner clothes, he looked the part and boy did he commit to it. Steve absently smoothed his own flyaways and stood a little straighter. It as usually Steve that set a scene and outlined the rules, but Bucky seemed to be going full-steam ahead and Steve would not be left behind. “It’s hot as hell out there. Do you mind if we start inside? You’ll be drawing my sweat if we don’t.” Bucky climbed back through the casement.  
  
“I would never,” Steve insisted, and he rose to match Bucky's character choices. His affected voice was slightly more articulated, pointed and sharp like a radio short without really having an accent. “But if you’d be more comfortable. Maybe you’d like a drink? Rob Roy with ice?”  
  
“Rogers, you read my mind. After a week like I’ve had, you’d make it a double.” Steve idly wondered what was in a Rob Roy, as if it mattered, really.  
  
“Tell me all about it,” he said as he poured water from the tap into a glass for Bucky. He mimed opening a bottle and tipping it generously. “Lemon?”  
  
“Please. I’ve just been in and out of interviews and press meetings for days. And on top of it, learning a new script. It’s exhausting work, I don’t need to tell you. I know your clientele are all in the business,” Bucky suggested, running a hand over his hair. He was wearing a lot more pomade than normal. Steve set the drink in front of him.  
  
“Maybe you ought to consider taking some time off?” He suggested. “You know, I heard Bing Crosby is headed down to Peru. Take in Machu Picchu.”  
  
“Oh, he’s not going anywhere without an open bar,” Bucky quipped, and as he took a sip of water he winced for effect. “I always forget you’re a generous bartender, Rogers!”  
  
“I try,” Steve said, gesturing to the chairs at the table. “Bing Crosby… I suppose he’ll make it in pictures someday, but he doesn’t have a handle on the industry quite like you do.” Bucky smiled and inclined his head, a sort of courtly gesture that almost made Steve break character.

“I think so. He never did appreciate me as a mentor but I’m not in this business for gratitude,” he laughed. “Guess we better get started, though, I’m pissing away all your time. I can pay you for two sittings,” he said, changing the topic abruptly.  
  
“Oh, that won’t be necessary, James, you’re no trouble. Practically my muse.”  
  
“That right?”  
  
“Absolutely.”  
  
“I like that,” he said, and he flushed with the heat. “Plenty cooler in here, but I’m a mess. Mind if I take off my suit jacket?” Bucky started to take off his sweater, painting a picture with his words wholly different from the one Steve couldn’t tear his eyes from. “I do love this herringbone wool, but for the summer I prefer a nice seersucker, light cotton something or other. Don’t you agree?” But Steve saw him there, then, cut like a dream in something tailored just right: herringbone. The design was pleasing, flattering (of course) and guided the eye through and down. He was sure he could hear a jazzy piano in the corridor just outside the studio, and the click of women's heels on marble.  
  
“I’m sure you’re dashing in either. Let me hang it over the chaise,” Steve said, and Bucky handed him the flimsy damp fabric, the weight of which in his imagination was money in his hands. Their eyes met as he took it, and that glimmer of mischief mirrored. It was Steve that looked away first, eyelashes cast down as he slung the shirt over the back of one of the two kitchen chairs. Bucky watched him as he smoothed it over the ladderback carefully, the thick patterned high-class fabric materializing under his fingertips in their fantasy, tender and purposeful. Bucky couldn’t categorize the observation, but he’d never thought of Steve’s hands like that. All at once they were mesmerizing, and they took such care. Perhaps he’d only never tried him in that light. Bucky shook the thought.  
  
“Kind of you to say,” he said, running a hand over his hair. “I’ll let my tailor know to call on you, make us a matching set. I’m sure he’d be happy to oblige, he owes me a favor.”  
  
“I did like that gabardine suit you wore to our last session. Was that a grey or a blue, I can’t recall.”  
  
“Charcoal.”  
  
“That’s right. With those nice chalk stripes.”  
  
“Your memory’s good. Always had an eye for details.” Bucky said it in all sincerity, and Steve picked up the change in his voice. He ducked the compliment.  
  
“Have to, in my line of work,” he said, and Bucky noted the dodge. He sat on the bed, cross-legged as always with the pad across his knees and his back arched over sweetly like a weeping willow. Bucky brought the chair around again, and Steve nodded when he chose a comfortable pose. “Perfect,” he said. He threw down a couple of guide lines and felt that pretending to know what he was doing had remarkable results. “Tell me about your next project, Mr. Barnes. I heard you had to learn to tap dance, is that right?” Bucky laughed at the setup but didn’t negate it.  
  
“Sure is. Why, they’re going to use me to tap secret Morse code messages in the movies, now. I’m a spy, see.”  
  
“Quite a secret to divulge to your humble portrait artist.” Steve glanced up and quirked an eyebrow.  
  
“I feel we’ve grown pretty close. I can tell you anything,” Bucky patted his temples with a ratty handkerchief but it moved like silk. “You wouldn’t tell a soul, would you, Rogers?”  
  
“You’re safe with me.” Steve’s eyes darted as he realized he’d not said what he meant, that he left out ‘your secret’ and it came out more tender than he’d wanted. But he did mean it. And Bucky nodded, not as the A-List celebrity reclining in some velvet wing back or white wicker chair but as a boy in Brooklyn's afternoon heat, a streak of sunlight slanting through the windows and across his lap lighting him strikingly gold.  
  
“Glad to hear it,” he said. Steve concentrated for a few minutes, lead scraping on the paper. The sounds of the sheet against the medium and the low tones they spoke in while he worked made the room disappear around their characters, a soft and sacred space away from the heat and the stress of their exterior dramas. They sat like that, quiet in reverie but for a remark passed between them here or there about their prestigious lives and careers, about cars or restaurants they dreamed would be the everyday experience of this life. It was easy and it was slow going, and two hours and several sketches slipped by without event.  
  
“It’s really something to watch you work, Steve,” Bucky said finally. When Steve looked back up, Bucky’s expression had changed. He was looking at him faraway again, waiting for him to say something, and Steve felt his stomach flop. If Bucky was getting bored he needed to switch things up.  
  
"You know, I was recounting to my secretary the other day the plot of this last film, my secretary Lucy, you met her on the way in?" Steve said and Bucky nodded, game as ever. "Well Lucy does love your work, and she was just shocked that you did all of those horseback riding stunts on your own without any training," Steve said quickly, and Bucky's eyebrows jumped. Bucky considered it for a minute, humming. He picked up his cocktail, swirling it idly.  
  
"It was dangerous for me, that's true, but only because it was underwater. The horses were all very easy to work with," he said, and Steve snickered. "Unlike Bette Davis, though she was an angel to me personally. When I mentioned to her that I was seeing you for another piece, she absolutely gushed about that poster you did for her last picture."  
  
"Oh, she did! What'd she say?"  
  
"She said, 'if nobody marries that Steve Rogers in the next week I'll buy the ring myself.'" Steve laughed nervously and shook his head. Bucky smiled a little wider but still didn't move. "Don't you worry, I told her off. I said 'Bette if he gets married he won't have time for his old pal Buck' and she backed off right away."  
  
"Kind of you." Steve hesitated as he hit the eyes, looking up to meet Bucky’s. He tried to size them up like a real artist but he was stranded there, just staring. It was a blessing he wasn't working with colors, because the whole thing would be over and done right out of the gate. Bucky had eyes that could stop a clock. Steve wasn't sure his own eyes were anything special to see; they were a kind of misty, bad-day-on-the-bay sort of gray he got from his mother. Bucky's were bright and wild, and no one else in his family had them. If you asked Steve to name the shade in just one word, he couldn't tell you.  
  
“Everything alright?” Bucky asked. Steve dropped his gaze to the page before shutting his eyes entirely.  
  
“Sure, just fine,” he said, the affect blanketing him in some pretend security. When he opened them he was intense and scrutinizing. “I know we wanted to highlight your eyes for this spread so I don’t want to get them wrong,” he said. Bucky laughed.  
  
“You look at ‘em all the time, ya dope,” he said before catching himself and coming back into character. “I appreciate that. Attention to detail, like I said. That’s what sets you apart.”  
  
“That’s what they tell me at _Life_ magazine, but between us two, I’m starting to feel I’m worth more than they pay.”  
  
“Well, I’d agree. You’re a first-class portrait artist; I feel lucky just to sit here," Bucky said, and Steve felt his cheeks warm. He ripped the page from the sketchbook and let it sit on the five others he'd already finished that afternoon. Bucky had the good sense to shift his position naturally as Steve started again. "And I get to say ‘I knew you when.’”  
  
“When?” Steve repeated. Bucky shrugged; not a boyish shrug but a slow and easy shrug of a young man rich with time and glory.  
  
“Sure,” he said. “Since we’ve known each other since we were boys, that is.” Steve was almost surprised at the truth of it, bleeding into their story now.  
  
“That’s right.”  
  
“How you would practice on my sorry mug---”  
  
“Young artists should be so lucky," Steve said, and he gestured to the pile of Buckys on the table, each one a little better than the last. "How many can say they got to capture the youthful glow of one of Hollywood’s most adored comedic actors?”  
  
“ _Comedic_ actors,” Bucky repeated with some doubt. Steve nodded as he shaded.  
  
“I know you thought you were pigeon-holed for your stunning monologues, you old heart breaker," Steve said dramatically, flourishing languid strokes on the page, "but honestly your skill for madcap has really peaked.”  
  
“Madcap!” Bucky repeated, his smile brimming. “Yeah, I never would have guessed.”  
  
“You’re natural. They say it’s harder to make a man laugh than it is to make him cry.”  
  
“I don’t know about that,” Bucky said. Steve noted that the light inside was throwing odd shadows on Bucky's face now as they glinted off the walls, and they'd be better off to move outside. The day had cooled somewhat since the heat of the afternoon and there came a very welcome breeze, and Bucky put his sweater back on to pose on the fire escape as they'd originally planned.  
  
“Honestly, I think I only come to these sittings so you can shower me with praise," he said as he finally leaned against the railing, some time into their last portrait of the day. Steve focused on his shoulders and neck, how they carried so little tension, such natural sway just there.   
  
“Oh, I’m just keeping you calm and happy so I can draw your nice smile," he replied, his legs splayed in front of him inelegantly though his voice remained in character. Bucky cocked his head.  
  
“Is that right?”  
  
“Yes sir. I painted a young fella just last week that was a real nightmare. Forget his name,” Steve spun the tale, his voice dripping in affect now, “Astaire, Estell. Something like that.”  
  
“Old Fred?” Bucky laughed. “What’d he ever do to you?”  
  
“Couldn’t sit still to save his life.” Bucky straightened.  
  
“I don’t have that problem. Still as stone.”  
  
“Practically Michelangelo's David.”  
  
“Too many clothes for that, I’d imagine,” Bucky said, and he winked. It struck Steve that he really could be a celebrity, looking like that. His hair was weightless even under all that grime, his features sharp with youth but angled just so. But it was his smile, honest and rakish, that lit his eyes from within, that put another nail in Steve's coffin every time.   
  
“Bucky, you really do look like a celebrity in that light.” Sarah’s voice came through the open window and Steve blanched at how she read his mind. Bucky laughed at himself and made several poses on the railing.  
  
“Gee, thanks, Mrs. Rogers.” Steve glanced down at his book and suddenly felt very self-conscious of his latest sketch; there was Bucky on the page, and it was much better than he had imagined. It was actually pretty good. “How’s it look, Stevie?”  
  
“Umm,” Steve frowned. “I think it’s not terrible." He put a few finishing lines on it as Bucky recounted their day to Sarah, but she could see all the details he left out on the page in front of Steve. The drawings inside on the table were all quick studies, as if Steve were catching lightning in a bottle. This was, in comparison, nearly iconography. Bucky looked like a portrait of a saint.  
  
"This is incredible," Bucky gaped when he looked through the results of the day. "By the end of the week I'll be hanging in a museum!" He exclaimed, and Steve couldn't help but feel a rush of joy at the thought of a full week of this. He'd take whatever he could get.   
  
"Come back tomorrow," he said. "Maybe we'll try watercolor!" They had both dropped their affect then, but when Bucky shook Steve's hand as he left, Steve knew they were still playing at this dream of their future selves. He looked forward to what it would look like tomorrow, and the day after that. 

* * *

But Bucky didn't come over the next day, or the day after that. Steve went about his days running errands, small tasks for neighbors and earning a dime here and there, but he didn't see Bucky again until Friday night. He wasn't sure if he was irritated or relieved to see him at the door, exhausted from a day at work. The smell of the water hit Steve like a wave and he reminded himself where Bucky was going every day: his uncle had roped him into moving crates at the Fulton Street Fish Market. Steve had the good sense not to mention it as Bucky breezed in, immediately adopting his movie star swagger and radio voice. Smelling like that, he was no celebrity in the making. Bucky got the job just the month prior (and maybe more accurately the job got him) and wasn’t too keen on it, from the sound of things. Every time Steve brought it up, Bucky would trail off and give him that vacant sinking look and Steve got mad again. Steve couldn’t have a job like that; he knew he couldn’t relate and didn’t try. It was just one more normal teenaged milestone that Bucky could check off that Steve might not, and that tally seemed only to be growing these days.   
  
But he sat down for a portrait and the stress melted into the floorboards. Sarah was in her room writing letters, and glancing up she caught a moment between them that she wished, maybe, she hadn't.   
  
Bucky's undershirt was twisted over his shoulder, and Steve set down his drawing pad absently, reaching across for it.  
  
“If you’ll allow me, Mr. Barnes. Silk does wrinkle so easily.”  
  
“By all means. Still as a stone, remember?” Bucky said. He didn’t move as Steve unrolled the thin fabric of his undershirt between his fingers, but he watched those deft artist’s hands, suddenly very aware of their proximity. “I must smell pretty bad in this heat, huh?” Steve caught his glance and cuffed him on the shoulder, but Bucky almost looked embarrassed. Steve caught it, and he changed the tempo altogether.  
  
“Oh, I’m used to that strong Bay Rum. You needn’t have gotten a hot towel shave for this portrait session.” Bucky relaxed a bit and ran a hand over his jaw. Steve considered that he probably would have facial hair before the year was out. “Or do you get one every day?”  
  
“The five o’clock shadow was getting a little out of hand. Really can’t beat that hot towel.”  
  
“I’m afraid I’m just too attached to this lush beard,” Steve said, miming over his own chin and smearing charcoal, making Bucky laugh out loud.  
  
“It really is a formidable beard,” he said as he subsided, and he trailed off a bit. Steve smiled down at the paper again.  
  
Bucky looked at him in that way he described to Sarah, that Steve thought was waiting for him to say something. He had been right about that, she noticed, and in the more important ways he had been absolutely, blindly wrong.  
  
When she showed Bucky out that night, she gave him a tight hug.  
  
"I'm glad you came up with this," Steve said to Sarah as he wished her good night. "I don't know how long it will last, but for now it's starting to feel normal again." He said he loved her, and she said she loved him back, and she sent him to sleep, to dream of some gorgeous future that maybe was seeming a little more within reach.   
  
And Sarah, in true Rogers tradition, worried herself into nightmares, for that same future was getting cloudier by the minute. She wondered when the real storm would finally break. 

* * *

Rain hit the rooftops that Sunday night like rice in a pan and Steve idly wondered if Bucky’s mother had kept him in all day. By now, his walls were littered with sketches of Bucky in various media from the one or two nights a week he could run over right after work. Steve sighed. He could spend the day doing any number of things; he didn’t rely on Bucky to move the hands of the clock, he told himself, he was just nice to have around. Steve couldn’t put a real name on the empty feeling of the mornings without his best friend. He called it bored but it was closer to tense. With Bucky there, all things could go wrong and still fall into places. Without him, who could say? Worse. He sure as hell wasn’t good luck, but he did make bad luck bearable. Steve flipped through his drawings and couldn’t help but feel proud. He’d really improved. Bucky’s face was now a well-traveled route and his hands almost knew the contours rote.  
  
Steve picked up the charcoal.  
  
On a new blank page he let the soft lines travel where they would; down the slope of the jaw, over his base collar bones. Steve could conjure him perfectly in his mind’s eye, three hundred and sixty degrees and hear his laugh in tingles up his arms. It was a strange trance, the patter of rain pushing his hands along the paper as a ghost of Bucky appeared on the page somehow. A boy was there where a boy hadn’t been there before. He couldn’t do this with other things; he needed references in the best of times even for things he saw every day. He wouldn’t dare try this with his mother’s face.  
  
Lord, was he handsome. When they were boys--- they were still boys, Steve had to catch himself, they were only playing men. Bucky was lucky, though. When the light hit him a certain way you could see the man he was going to be, and it lit a fire in Steve’s lungs worse than his own body could manage sometimes. It started as a warm admiration but it smoldered into envy, at times. There wasn’t anything to be done there, he thought as he rounded the ears, short of an honest to God miracle, and Steve felt the weight of his mother’s prayers like Atlas. Would she work so hard, would she break her body and addle her heart, over a healthy young man that could support the house with a job, over a child like Bucky? It was a useless exercise, he reminded himself. You are dealt the hand you are dealt, and you can win with a bluff just as easily. He sat up straighter, pressed a little harder.  
  
The old worries plagued him still, in spite of their good times together in the last few weeks. Bucky could do better, Steve scowled now, that had always been true. Maybe, on nights like this when they didn't see each other, he did. Steve mentally cataloged the possible new friends Bucky may have on the side as he laid down the shoulders, sinews connecting in taut lines to his strong upper arms. Bucky could have any friends he wanted, and he did at times. Other boys easily spoke to him about baseball, about girls, about the Shadow in the latest Detective Story Hour, anything. It wasn’t that Steve couldn’t hold his own; he just wouldn’t call more than two or three other kids his friends, and none of them as Capital F Friend as Bucky.  
  
But Bucky didn’t need him like that. It occurred to him that he wasn’t sure what Bucky needed, and the charcoal stopped cold mid-curve on a piece of wayward hair in his eyes.  
  
Steve wasn’t interesting. He didn’t have a job with real adults, he didn’t have smooth-talking friends or swooning girls. Bucky was coming around more, and finally looking like he wanted to be there, because Steve was playing a character in a world he wanted to visit.  
  
But Steve Rogers was good company once, his ego reminded him. He didn’t need to justify why Bucky came around. Or why Bucky stayed, more importantly. Maybe he was too chipped and caustic for other kids, but Bucky could take it, and maybe, even, Bucky wanted to. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.  
  
Speaking of mouths, this he could draw in his sleep, with his feet, under water. An invisible clock somewhere was counting hours into days, adding the full minutes he’d spent staring at Bucky’s mouth. It hypnotized him, the way his lips twisted around throwaway jokes, how soft and quiet it seemed at rest. It was a perverse thing to dwell on, or it would be if Steve were not an artist, so he shooed that thought away.  
  
Bucky could have it all, Steve sighed inwardly, and honestly he deserved it. There was no one on the planet Steve would rather see succeed, and that was the beginning and end of his envy, if he really looked it in the eye. He wanted those things that Bucky wanted.  
  
For all that, though, he didn't know what he wanted. It would be nice to draw like this for a living, to make beautiful things and share them. And it would be nice if Bucky could be there. He knew those two things.  
  
So he seethed at himself for letting Bucky dictate his happiness now. The charcoal snapped in his hands, and the rain poured on.   
  
Sarah went to sleep, and she would have thought Bucky appearing in the middle of the night was a dream had it not been for the sound of Steve tripping over himself to open the door and shush him.  
  
"Buck, what the hell. Are you okay?" He tried his best to whisper but he was a bit too concerned to get the volume correct. Bucky stood in the doorway, glancing towards Sarah's room to make sure she was asleep. She didn't move; she listened.  
  
"I just--- I got in a bit of a tussle with my ma and I went for a walk, and it started pouring again." Bucky was dripping puddles on to the floor. "And I wanted to ask if maybe you wanted to move to California with me." Steve gaped at him for what felt like a whole minute before answering.  
  
"Come inside, you're soaking wet."   
  
“I’m serious,” Bucky said, and his tone affirmed it. He stepped into the kitchen but only held the towel Steve offered him limply in his hands. “Steve, I’m serious.”  
  
“California?” Steve asked, shutting the door as quietly as possible. "It's too late for this, Buck---"  
  
“No,” he said. “It's--- it's not the game. I mean it. You could paint the movie posters. I could be--- it’s not too far fetched. Is it?” Bucky's voice was hoarse, with yelling or desperation Steve didn't know. But it worried him as he listened.  
  
“No," Steve replied carefully. "I mean, it’s far to travel, but---”  
  
“We could do it. Save up a couple of bucks for when we’re out of school. Don’t you think? That California air would do you good, huh?” Bucky looked at him suddenly ten years younger, behind watering eyes.  
  
“Sure, but--- Buck, you have your family here.” Steve took the towel, useless in Bucky's hands, and started to pat the drips off his face. Bucky didn't even hear him.  
  
“We’d make it out there. Those guys on the radio, they’re not better than we are. You’re the most talented guy in the whole city. You gotta get out of here even if I’m stuck moving fish boxes. You could make it.”  
  
“Very dramatic," Steve said, and he found himself trying to guide Bucky to a kitchen chair, like a shock victim. "I wouldn’t go without you.”  
  
“Sure. But you could. I might get stuck, you know? If I got stuck, you could still go. Talent like that," Bucky insisted. He didn't sit. Instead he picked up the fresh charcoal drawing there, its runoff dusting the table as he lifted it. "You drew this without me even here," he realized. He set it back down as if it were an artifact, feather-light and sacred.  
  
“I just know your face so well now.” Steve tried to dodge the compliment, unsure where it came from. “I like it better when you’re here.”  
  
“So do I. But you don’t need me for it.” Bucky looked down at his feet, at the puddles he was dripping into the cracks of the floor. “I just… I feel so broken and tired all the time with this stupid job. Or fighting with my mom. I never feel like that here.” Steve nodded; that much made sense.  
  
“Because it’s pretend.”  
  
“No, because it’s with you," he said, a bit too loud. He tried to rein in his volume, back to a harsh whisper. "That’s the difference. I think we could do anything. I honestly do.”  
  
“Is the job that bad?”  
  
“It’s not just the job. I don’t know." Bucky stopped and his breath caught up. His hair hung in wet spidering tresses over his forehead, dripping into his eyes. "I want to be a good son. But I feel like this won't last. Like this is the final summer, before--- something. I just want it to mean something.” Steve felt something yank at the roots of his heart. He had this feeling; his looked more like an unknown dread.  
  
“It’s not the last summer, Buck," he said without knowing if that was true, but Bucky steamrolled right on through as his emotions tumbled out.   
  
“I feel like I grew up overnight and things are going fast," he stuttered. "And you’re not coming with me.” Steve stared at him.  
  
“I’m always with you. You can’t get rid of me.”  
  
“We’re fighting, Steve!" Bucky exclaimed in a strained yelp before Steve immediately shushed him. Bucky swatted him away. "We’re fighting right now! We never fought like this before. We don’t spend time together and we don’t see eye to eye! We only have a couple more years before---”  
  
“We literally don’t see eye to eye because you won’t stop growing!” Steve rasped, laughing through it now. “This is happening to _me_ because it’s happening to _you_! I will never, ever let you leave me behind, Barnes! Is that what you want to hear? Jesus, all this time I thought you were trying to tell me you were growing out of me, when really---”  
  
“Do you mean that?” Bucky cut him off, his voice now quiet and small without trying. He continued to drip on the floor. Steve couldn't believe what he was hearing.  
  
“Holy shit," he said to himself, rubbing his hands over his eyes with sleep. "Yes. I can’t count on my hands the number of times I thought I was gonna die if you hadn’t been there. We're in this together. None of that’s gonna change because you get a job, or you get married, or you become some big Hollywood star. We didn’t just make those promises as kids for pretend. You knew that. Did you need to see it? Look how well I know you," he said, thrusting the charcoal page back at him. "I’m seeing your face in my sleep.” Bucky ran a wet hand over the picture.  
  
“Dreamboat that I am.”  
  
“Yeah, dreamboat that you are,” Steve repeated, and it was as if the realization dawned on him verbatim from his mother's mouth the weeks before. “ _We’ve got time_ , Buck. We have so much time!” Steve really had to stifle his laughter now at full tilt, his hands scrubbing over his face. Bucky stood there, dripping on to the drawing.  
  
“Am I being that stupid?”  
  
“No, you idiot, this is like the backwards gift of the magi! I thought I was the one losing my mind being petty because you were drifting away, not the other way around. My god, oh my god, Bucky.” Steve collapsed into him, pulling himself into Bucky’s wet frame and gripping so tight as he laughed until he was afraid he’d cry. The page crushed between them, and Bucky couldn’t help but laugh. They stood there, holding each other with the shattering relief that they were, and had been, on the same page, sharing the same anxieties all along. And when they named it, it vanished from sight. 

* * *

When Sarah left the next morning, she was careful not to wake them. They shared Steve's child-sized bed, overflowing with tangled limb, and Sarah shook her head with a smile.   
  
She took from the kitchen table a charcoal drawing of Bucky that was crumpled and wet almost beyond recognition, and she folded it into a small parcel to tuck in her uniform pocket.  
  
As she dodged puddles on the way to the streetcar she ached as only a mother can, realizing that nothing would be easy for her boy.  
  
But he had such love, and there was a godliness in that no mortal thing could take away. It would not be easy, but in true Rogers fashion, it would be right.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to bopeep for writing this amazing fic, the rebloggable masterpost is [here](http://iamonlydancing.tumblr.com/post/174816910412/hold-still-a-collab-for-the-2018-capreversebbfic) on Tumblr


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